In a tall wooden room in the Purcellville, Va., train station, 10 writers sit at a table. One, named Jerry, wears an earring and has veins running through his hands like rivers. He uses those hands in big gestures as he tells us he’s writing a novel set on Mars where the repressive government prevents the sale of sushi and milk chocolate. Another writer, Val, has started coming because she’d like to quit teaching English and write. As Val taps her pen against the table, a piece of plastic breaks off, flies at me, and hits me in the forehead.

Ross Douthat's Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012) notes rightly that heresy often comes from intensifying one Christian teaching and ignoring those that temper it. For example, we need to keep in mind that we are both made in God's image and fatally corrupted by original sin. Douthat writes that "absent the latter emphasis, religion becomes a license for egotism and selfishness," with adultery becoming "following your heart" and vanity becoming "self-improvement."

The controversy over David Barton's The Jefferson Lies (see "The David Barton Controversy," Aug. 25 issue) led Thomas Nelson to stop publishing the book (see "Lost confidence," Aug. 9)—but Glenn Beck's Mercury Ink plans to publish a new edition.